taken in

I saw Luc Besson’s movie Taken tonight. The best thing about it was Liam Neeson. And, off the top of your head, do you remember which character he played in Boorman’s Excalibur? But back to today’s movie… I went in, expecting a thrill ride and nothing more, especially from Besson, who committed that waste of talent called The Fifth Element a few years ago. All storytelling is manipulation, although some are more blatant about it. Even then, I can accept being blatantly manipulated, if the message is one I agree with. As for Taken… Maybe I am reading too much into it, but it’s hard for yours truly, an immigrant with a funny accent, not to be annoyed by the apparent politics exuding from Besson’s mind. I mean, as Neeson, a retired CIA agent, rushes to Paris where his daughter was abducted, the bad guys are Albanian immigrants, which the movie outright chastises for messing up their new home, what with their stealing young women into sexual slavery and selling the hero’s daughter to a fat sheik. The only way the movie could have laid it on thicker would have been for the sheik to wear robes. There are bad Frenchmen too, but they’re the one who look the other way while the immigrants and the Ay-rabs steal the wimminfolk.

The message I got from this film?

Outsourcing torture is bad because it’s usually done in countries with an unreliable electrical grid, but torture is justified because foreigners hate America and we must defend ourselves.